MSFS 2020 First Impressions

[JohnWillimas]

I'm going to add my four penny worth here. Overall I'm pretty impressed. For all the niggles (some of which will get cured and some of course won't) flying in the sim is a treat and that's what it's about in the end ...

Liked

The scenery of course - I can't get over the fact that you get the whole world on photo real quality plus the sim for less than we were paying for the UK VFR CD's a few years back. Default airfields are OK and there are some UK farm strips in the sim that aren't in FSX as standard.

The flight model - I'm finding the aircraft much more convincing (=not easy) to handle than the default aircraft under FS-X.

Cockpit visuals - nicely done.

Runway slopes - so much more real.

Performance - all right I've got a fairly high spec machine but FS2020 is much smoother than my long tweaked FS-X was.

Lessons and challenges - lessons help you through the keyboard changes (see below) and challenges with comparison to others scores might be a bit gamey but fun nonetheless.

The Not So Liked

Because the scenery background is sooooo good, the deficiencies in the 3d buildings are more obvious - big buildings in place of housing, tower blocks in villages, etc. Maybe there's a role for ORBX replacing generic buildings with cotswold stone cottages in my neck of the woods, for example.

The cockpit view system - it may be a learning curve thing but I haven't been able to set up a view pan on my hat switch yet. Plus there an "instrument view" option that I haven't explored yet.

Not really sure about the whole traffic thing yet - I've yet to see any other aircraft and I'm missing the wonderful AI Ships that made FSX over water so much fun.

Keyboard mapping - I suppose it had to be different but it's going to take some getting used to and once I have I suspect that swiotching back to FSX will be a challenge.

Aircraft hangar interface - I'm not sure how that will cope with lots of aircraft types and lots of liveries...

The download time - I get 20-30mbps internet and it still took most of the day. That's all right for the initial setup but it will be a pain if there are big and frequent updates.

The Buggy

It's new - so surprise, surprise there are bugs. I haven't had anything fatal yet but air traffic control seems to forget to speak at some points even though it's displaying text messages. Vectoring under IFR seems a bit haphazard - had to switch to VFR on landing to get down on one flight.

The Worries

I can see that MS are plugged in to the third party payware developer community (and that's a big plus) but I'm not clear how friendly this sim is going to be to the amateurs. Will we see the rich range of quirky aircraft that we have for FS9 & FSX eventually? I hope so.

[chrispbits]

Good review John.

There are a few tutorials on You Tube re setup - Squirrel has at least 3, which you should find valuable. I still need to play with joystick axis sensitivity settings - I've got them at -20 but may need a nudge further to the left.

Some incongruous building types aside the world in general is a much more convincing place in this sim. The default aircraft are pretty good in general and especially so if your thing is low and slow.

The weather engine and lighting effects are something else. I think it's the first time I've been blinded by a rising or setting sun low on the horizon in a sim before and the lighting colour reflects well on the position of the sun as well as light intensity.

Satellite imagery suffers pretty much the same problems as any other satellite imagery - sometimes you can see the joins but they've done a good job of suppressing the colour and seasonal differences - certainly better than ORBX with the UK True Earth series.

Even if the scenery doesn't change much, as it is now should save a fortune on add ons. More to spend on the many new aircraft ported over from P3D and FSX etc (here's hoping).

Come on Nigel you know you want to join the party!

[chrispbits]

I forgot to mention the trees. Possibly the stars of the show! They actually look like real trees from all angles.

[GHD]

My first impression.

It took me an hour to calibrate my "Microsoft" joystick

Before doing this I had many BDODs.

Now I need to study Squirrel's videos re the cameras.

Here's one for Ben:

[spatialpro]

At the risk of sounding dumb, how does one capture a) screenshots; and 2) video... and how does one change where they're saved?

Many thanks

Andy

[TSR2]

Just press print screen I think Andy. That’s how I’ve been doing it. It saves those into your screenshots folder. No idea how else to do it.

Nice one George, even the weather looks right for today.

I’ve loaded a ship model into blender and I’ve forgotten how to get it to display the textures But on the plus side I have got the blender to MSFS addon working... I think.

[spatialpro]

Yes, apparently Windows + PrtScn takes a screenshot and places it in your Pictures > Screenshots folder.

For those using the Steam overlay F12 takes a screenshot and saves it in the Steam App and also in inside the Program Files > Steam folder structure.

I'm still not having any joy finding out how to capture videos within the sim though... This is a shame, as the Drone camera is amazing to use with and Xbox controller (a highly recommended purchase for this use alone!) and videos captured with it would be cinematic in style!

[blanston12]

I tried the window-Prt screen combination and it did not work for me. What I have done is first press the FN-Prt Screen and then it copies the image to the clip board, I then paste it into the Paint app and save. A bit cumbersome but it works.

[spatialpro]

Hi Joe,

Did you buy via Steam, Windows App Store or XBox Game Pass? I'm wondering if this has an influence.

Andy

[Paul K]

I recommend PicPick for screen shots - I've been using it for years. It has its own editor, similar to MS Paint, and loads of options such as format ( BMP, JPEG etc), and you can specify where the shots are saved, creating your own directory if desired. As the shots open in the paint editor, you can crop, enhance, add text etc without having to go search for the picture first. Scroll down to the bottom - it's free for personal use.

https://picpick.app/en/